


Great Tribble-ation

by Charity_Angel



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Crack, Fluff, Gen, LITERALLY, Tribbles (Star Trek), Vague crossover, at least it started out that way, trans background character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27541648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charity_Angel/pseuds/Charity_Angel
Summary: In which Tribbles are found in the GFFA, find their way into the greater galaxy, and make trouble for the Army.(only rated T for some tiny little swears)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 45





	1. In which Boil is introduced to small fuzzies

**Author's Note:**

> While this is technically a crossover, I haven't tagged it as such since it's just the Tribbles rather than characters with speaking parts.
> 
> Massive kudos to [@nereiix](https://nereiix.tumblr.com) for their [fantastic art](https://nereiix.tumblr.com/post/631148000494911489/) that inspired this nonsense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to anyone on the app - I know the image is big, but it's amazing and I don't want to re-size it.

Boil raised an eyebrow as Waxer’s belt chirped organically, and studiously ignored it. It was nothing to do with him; absolutely nothing. Nope.

Well. It _hadn’t_ been anything to do with him until his _idiot,_ batchmate pulled a small, furry something out of one of the utility pouches when it meeped again, and started stroking it gently. It started purring. Force _dammit_.

“What is that?”

What had he done to deserve this? He was too old for this shit. _Waxer_ was too old to be _pulling_ this shit.

“No idea.” Waxer was bloody smiling about this. Fucker. “Isn’t it adorable?”

‘It’ fit nicely into Waxer’s palm, and was apparently spherical, dusty-brown in colour. There were no discernable eyes, ears, or mouth. Boil found that somewhat disconcerting, frankly. ‘It’ trilled gently at Waxer as he continued petting it.

“You can’t keep it.”

“Sure I can,” Waxer said, cheerfully disagreeing with him. “It’s not like it can get into the wiring and nibble. And it’ll be good for morale. And it’s only a baby – there were bigger ones back where I found it.”

Boil put a hand to his bucket and shook his head. “You _stole_ a baby... whatever from its _family_?”

Waxer stopped walking, turning to Boil and holding up his hands. The baby stopped making noise.

“I didn’t steal it,” he said. “It rolled over to me, and it was being nudged by the bigger ones. It’s _fine_ , and it likes me, don’t you? Hardcase has got one too.”

“Oh _good_. So Rex will tell Cody when he finds it. Because he will. And Cody will come straight to us.”

__

Waxer sighed happily. “You’re such a pessimist. Here, you stroke it for a bit.”

__

Suddenly there was a ball of fur in front of his face, cooing gently at him.

__

Yeah, this was going to end up _spectacularly_. Thank the Force there was only one; they wouldn’t have to handle a population explosion. As long as Hardcase kept his beast away from Waxer’s.

__

Boil so wished he hadn’t had that thought. But at least that trilling was kind of soothing, actually...

__


	2. The Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tribbles do what Tribbles do

There were some mornings Boil wished he hadn’t opened his eyes. This was one of them.

“Why does Cody like you so much?” he growled at Waxer. “Also, where did _those_ come from?”

There as a fluffy thing that was not Rugam on Waxer’s head. It looked like Rugam, except that it was black. And there was a grey one sitting over his heart. Rugam was on his stomach, looking suspiciously pleased with itself for an otherwise-nondescript ball of fur. There were others too, of varying shades of brown and black.

“Maybe they got into the drop ships?” Waxer mused. “Flocked here to be with their friend?”

“Waxer?”

“Yes, Coric?”

“There are more of them.” Coric hadn’t really had a break yet – he was in the barracks just to get some shuteye before heading back to the medbay.

“Yup.”

“That means they can breed.”

There was a moment of silence, only disturbed by the gentle cooing of ten furballs. “Um…”

Boil sighed heavily and resisted the urge to roll his eyes not at all.

“Footlockers,” he said. “Put one in mine, one in yours. Anyone else willing?”

Their _vod’e_ were quick to chime in, claim themselves a new pet ball and help stop an infestation from getting them into trouble with Cody. Boil just hoped to their guardian spirit that there weren’t any more lurking around the ship.

At least they didn’t have legs, so it wasn’t like they could jump out of the footlockers. They were secure, happily trilling at each other when everyone headed out to the mess.

.oOo.

Boil counted to twenty in his head before comming Coric.

“How do things clone naturally?”

There was a moment of silence. “Well, single-celled organisms clone themselves kind of the same way our bodies heal. Why?”

“Because there are seven balls of fur in my footlocker, twelve in yours, and one stuck to the karking _wall_!”

“I’m throwing Waxer under the shuttle for this,” Coric growled. “Bring me one of them, will you?”

“Just the one?”

“Don’t test me, Boil. You let him bring the damn thing aboard – I’m not above throwing you under the shuttle too.”

He chose the brown-and-beige one on the wall – it seemed the most interesting –tucked it into his empty rat-bar pouch, and headed off to the medbay.


	3. Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are more Tribbles (again), secrets are found out, and the author shamelessly steals Trek titles.

Boil had no inclination whatsoever to count them by the following morning: there were far too many for that. He was more worried by the cautious knock on the bulkhead near his bunk while he was pulling on his boots.

Cody was the only _vod_ who knocked, to give the lower ranks a chance to hide something he might have to officially disapprove of, but he would never be that timid. That didn’t leave many suspects as to the identity of the caller. Boil could literally only think of one person, and… well, they were in deep _osik_.

He stood with a deep sigh and stood directly in the doorway before pushing the open button.

He had never been so disappointed to be right before, nor wished to see their _jetii_ less.

“I’m terribly sorry to bother you, Boil,” General Kenobi said, looking oddly… embarrassed, “but there is the strangest feeling in the Force around your barracks. An overabundance of life, if anything. I don’t suppose you would know anything about it?”

The deathly silence that fell behind him as troopers stopped trying to surreptitiously hide the Balls (the name was absolutely 100% not Longshot being childish…). That wasn’t at _all_ suspicious. _**Idiots**_. He could have blagged it if not for that. With a sigh he stepped to one side.

Brothers had armfuls of Balls. Waxer was on Wooley’s shoulders trying to get the ones off the ceiling.

General Kenobi actually looked somewhat startled, although he hid it well after the initial surprise. “Well, yes, that would certainly explain it. Would anyone care to elaborate?”

Everyone deliberately didn’t look at Waxer. Force-dammit they really were all ridiculously useless at subterfuge. How the hell did they all get off of Kamino? Only Alyx had any wits about xir, her gaze unwavering from the general despite the plethora of Balls xe held. Including the grey one on xir shoulder, as if that was a normal thing.

“It was only one, sir, I _swear_!” 

“Coric’s got one to study,” Boil offered in order to deflect the attention from his idiot pod-squadmate. “He spent all night in the med-bay so he might know something by now.”

Kenobi plucked one from Waxer’s hoard. “I can certainly understand the appeal,” he said, smiling softly at the trilling beast. “My master used to pick up things like this regularly; I never appreciated the habit at the time.

“Waxer, Alyx, head down to the cargo hold, see if we have anything that might be large enough to contain these creatures without suffocating the poor things.”

“Nothing airtight,” Alyx confirmed with a nod. “Got it. Thank you, sir.”

Waxer threw Balls onto the nearest bunk and slid off of Wooley’s shoulders. Kenobi allowed them to pass with nothing but a wry smile.

“Boil, would you accompany me to the med-bay? I suspect that Coric might be more amenable to a discussion if I were to be accompanied by someone in the know.”

“You mean he’s not going to try and hide what he’s up to, because he’ll figure out you already know?”

Kenobi just grinned at him, and Boil realised somehow he had managed to pick up Diplomat by osmosis. Just… no. And also fuck that with a DC15-A – that was Cody’s job, being all nice to people. And Waxer’s, but he was actually _genuinely_ nice, whereas Cody was a conniving bastard who could put on an act to get what he wanted.

(Just as well he was a _caring_ conniving bastard, really, and that what he wanted most was to keep his brothers as safe as possible.)


	4. SCIENCE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it becomes obvious that the author is a scientist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case that summary wasn't clue enough, yes, I am a biologist. I have _thoughts_ about Tribble biology.
> 
> Also, TW - there are discussions of miscarriage in this chapter, both in terms of explaining it to someone who doesn't know what it means, and in practical terms of Tribble reproduction and cloning tubes. If you feel this might be triggering, there is absolutely nothing vital in this chapter. Please feel free to skip it.

Coric did not look happy. In fact, Boil would say with some certainty that Coric was distinctly _un_ happy. It didn’t take a genius to realise that the reason for this was that his single quarantine cage (a standard on the ship in case they ran into anything unusual that needed studying in case it was dangerous to whatever _vod_ had been bitten/scratched or had eaten it without it being cleared, and contrary to popular opinion about the 212th and their propensity to run into weird crap, had never been used before) had now become three quarantine cages. Vid-links on his computer showed another two cages in enviro-tubes.

One of the cages on the desk held just one Ball, as did one of the ones on the screen. But that wasn’t what was foremost on Coric’s mind.

“Who gave the game away?” he asked wearily. “ _Was_ it Rex?”

Kenobi looked startled by that. “Actually it was the Force. Should I assume that we need to contact the _Resolute_?”

“We know at least one made it aboard,” Boil said. Hey, maybe he could do this diplomacy shit after all? He’d managed to say that without pointing fingers at anyone.

Kenobi nodded, no longer surprised. He knew the _vod’e_ of the 501st, after all. Boil reckoned he could probably take a very good guess as to which of them had been as idiotic as Waxer. It was probably a 50:50 chance between Hardcase and Fives, after all. Jesse would know better, because Kix would murder him, just like Boil should have done with Waxer.

“I imagine Anakin and Ahsoka have probably noticed their guests already; for such tiny things they do have quite a presence in the Force,” Kenobi said. “However, perhaps it would be helpful to be able to give them some solid information? Coric, might I assume that the varying quantities of these creatures in the cages is important?”

Coric nodded wearily, but seemed to be pleased to finally have someone to discuss this with. Someone who could do something about it.

“The enviro-tubes are set at reduced oxygen levels,” Coric said. “One at eighteen percent, one at fourteen.”

“Not a level of deprivation likely to kill most oxygen-breathers,” Kenobi said approvingly. “But not precisely comfortable, either, at fourteen percent.”

Boil chose not to comment on the fact that they had done a training exercise in a room that the Long-Necks had gotten down to twelve percent before the _vod’e_ started passing out. Saying things like that tended to make Kenobi upset.

“From what I can figure out, these guys reproduce every twelve hours. Parthenogenesis, by the way,” he said to Boil specifically. “It’s a way that animals can kind of self-fertilise.”

That definitely explained that one – he didn’t think animals could actually clone naturally. Not ones as big and complex as Balls, anyway.

“And we’re talking roughly ten to a squad, same as us,” Coric continued.

“Litter,” Kenobi corrected gently. “For the progeny of a non-sentient being, where there are multiple offspring at once.”

Boil filed the word away: he doubted he would ever need it, but it was always good to know.

“Right you are. You can see that at eighteen percent, the litter size was noticeably smaller – just three. At fourteen, there’s no babies at all.”

Kenobi appeared thoughtful. “Do you know if that is indicative of miscarriage, or are they capable of just halting their pregnancy until conditions are favourable?”

Coric shrugged. “Not exactly my area of expertise,” he admitted. “Ordinarily, I should euthanise it and dissect but… never been in the guts of something this small before. And, short of suffocating it, I’ve got no idea how to kill it.”

Kenobi nodded. “And not only is suffocation unnecessarily cruel, it could destroy the evidence you are seeking.”

“Exactly. I’m going to keep it in there another day, just in case I’ve only slowed things down. From its _vod_ in the other tube, I’m guessing not but you never know.”

“Indeed.”

Coric tried not to look too pleased by that validation from their _jetii_. Boil got it: none of them were stupid by any means, but this was well outside the training of even the medics, who knew a hell of a lot more about biology and running experiments than Boil and the majority of the army.

“Quick question?” Boil felt he was about to prove just how little the _vod’e_ at large knew about nat-borns and biology. And he knew that the 212th and 501st knew more than most, because General Kenobi insisted on it. (So did General Secura and General Koon, once they got wind of it.)

“What’s ‘miscarriage’?”

Kenobi and Coric exchanged a glance, and Kenobi gave a little kind of nod. Clearly he had decided that of the two of them, he was probably better prepared to answer. Probably meant it was a reproduction thing. Or a female thing. Coric wasn’t much good at either of those.

“Sometimes the gestation process goes wrong and young die before birth,” Kenobi said. “How things happen as a result of that differ from species to species, and even relate to how advanced the pregnancy is.”

“You mean like some of our brothers died as tubies?” That, Boil understood. Sometimes things just karked up, no matter how good the Long-Necks were at their jobs.

Kenobi blinked once, and then nodded. “Yes, I would imagine it’s exactly like that. There can be many reasons, although I would imagine in the case of your tubie brothers there was some mutation in their particular seed cell that prevented proper growth. That certainly happens in nature, and there is nothing to be done for it. Although, as an aside in the interests of furthering your education of the wider galaxy, miscarriage can be terribly distressing for the family. Again, it’s very variable.

“What we’re looking at here is possibly the death of the young before birth, because of their parent’s oxygen deficiency.”

“And food deficiency,” Coric added, tapping the cage with the single Ball in it. “This one has only been fed a tenth of what the others have been eating. Which wasn’t much to start with,” he added hastily.

“I would never have thought otherwise,” Kenobi said smoothly, his eyes twinkling. “But it is an interesting observation.

“I suspect our first priority should be for me to tell Anakin not to feed the little devils. And you should ensure your brothers do the same, Boil.

“Coric, you look exhausted: is there someone you could hand the observation over to for a few hours so that you can rest?”

Coric considered that. “I’d rather limit it to the vod’e who already know,” he mused, which sounded entirely sensible to Boil. No sense in introducing someone new to their furry little problem. “Out of our barracks? Probably Alyx.”

“I will send xir over once the others are contained,” Kenobi told him gently. "And then you need to sleep, my friend.”


	5. The Resolute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we have a change of perspective.

What Kenobi had failed to mention, in an effort not to cause unnecessary alarm with his men (or guilt, in one particular case), was that the Resolute was en route back to Coruscant. At the rate of potential reproduction of the creatures, having them loose on Coruscant would be a disaster on the same level as the Zillo beast, if somewhat more charming in presence.

“Oh,” Rex said as the link opened, before any Jedi could speak. “Guess I _don’t_ need to call Cody.”

It seemed that the little infestation had been found there too: Ahsoka had one perched between her montrals, which was utterly adorable, and absolutely undignified and un-Jedi.

“Actually, he doesn’t know yet,” Obi-Wan said. “I thought it best to inform you first, given their propensity to multiply. I would hate for them to get into the food supply. Or loose on Coruscant.”

“Kix is busy giving them the third degree right now,” Anakin said, a little too gleefully. “Then he’s going to start experimenting.”

“He may wish to speak to Coric; he’s a little ahead of the game there. Perhaps there is something to be said for the men being a touch less fearful of their medic?”

Ahsoka waved that off dismissively. “Kix is a tooka. He’s only scary when he needs to be. Like when Hardcase brings an unquarantined animal aboard.”

That confirmed that suspicion nicely.

“Ask him to wait a few hours, please,” Obi-Wan asked. “Coric hasn’t slept for quite some time now. He needs to rest.”

Rex nodded sharply. If Obi-Wan had to guess, Kix probably hadn’t slept that much either. Medics did tend to be like that – they worked themselves to the point of exhaustion caring for others. (And yes, he was self-aware enough to realise that wasn’t _just_ medics with that tendency.)

“Please tell me that you have not yet reached Coruscant?”

“Just hit orbit,” Anakin confirmed. “Not left the ship yet. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure we quarantine until we round up all of these… things.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “Please do. I can’t imagine what would happen if even just one of these creatures got onto a planet they don’t belong on.”

“Yes, Master,” Anakin responded in that voice that was just shy of insubordinate, but affectionate at the same time.

.oOo.

Despite all of the warnings, and all of the data Coric and Kix put together, General Skywalker took a couple of the creatures down to Coruscant anyway. Rex thought it was a bad idea, but he held his tongue. Wasn’t his place to argue, not about this.

Didn’t excuse his petting the beige one; that was unforgiveable, even if they were soothing. Apparently the things were a bit Force-sensitive and exuded a calming effect on those around him. The thought had crossed his mind that maybe they should throw a pile of these at the tinnies, see if they worked on mechs. Might end the war a hell of a lot faster.

Maybe he should ask Skywalker to give one of them to that idiotic protocol droid of his, see if it could be calmed down. If that neurotic scrap pile could be soothed, then maybe this blunder of Hardcase’s could be the salvation of the Republic.

Rex could dream, at least. Probably wouldn’t work, but it was nice to consider.


End file.
